I have to admit, I’m totally blown away with the new Terrain Linx system. It is simply amazing. The only downpart is that with this amazing new system, I don’t really feel like constructing any of the older sets. The fact that you can build a flexible system just seems to make it more worthwhile to make TLX stuff. That and the fact that my wife kills me the next time she sees me building a big piece "which we don’t have any space for".

That being said, I have always loved the cathedrae noctis. Without a doubt one of my favorite sets ever. So when Streets of Himmelveil came out, I was very anxiously waiting for when you guys would make a TLX version of it. After a few weeks however it dawned on me. First of all, maybe there never will be an official TLX version of Cathedrae Noctis. And what’s more, I’d rather have Matt Lyon making all kinds of new, shiny stuff, instead of waisting his time redesigning a set he already had done.

So that’s where my mad Photoshop skills came in...

Long story short: I’m making my first kitbash. And I’m going BIG. I’ll post pictures here of the work in progress as I go along, but I have to admit it is taking some time. Not alone does it take a hell of a lot of time to photoshop the PDF’s, it also takes a lot of time to construct the entire cathedral (stained glass windows, anyone?). The idea is that in the end, I’ll have a completely TLX converted Cathedral.

Anyhow, here’s the first shots. These are from tthe groundplan for the cathedral. All in nice TerrainLinx tiles. Combined with some Himmelveil streets.

As this is my first time posting, please let me know if I'm doing something wrong (pictures too big, that sort of thing). Also, if I’m infringing on any copyrights or anything, please moderators, take this post down. I don’t want to hurt anybody. Just going hyperactive like a true fanboy.

As this is my first time posting, please let me know if I'm doing something wrong (pictures too big, that sort of thing). Also, if I’m infringing on any copyrights or anything, please moderators, take this post down. I don’t want to hurt anybody. Just going hyperactive like a true fanboy.

If possible try to keep your pics down to 1024X768 px In terms of legalese; you aren't doing anything wrong so long as you are doing it for personal usage only. Sharing with eager beavers looking for a conversion would obviously be a bad thing for us. Our official stance on TerrainlinX conversions is that we currently don't have any official plans to retrofit old sets to the new standard. Its time consuming (as you would well understand) and we've got a lot of work ahead of us. That said, if ambitious souls like yourself can take an older product and do a complete conversion, we'd be more than happy to talk to you about it and to make it available to the fanbase on the store. Its an all or nothing proposition though, we need total conversions because we simply don't have time to lend a hand.

AWESOME work so far! I agree with Matt that the treated anchors are a nice touch!

Keep us in the loop.

-D

Last edited by Gamesmith Denny on 11-01-2009, 08:48 PM, edited 1 time in total.

That said, if ambitious souls like yourself can take an older product and do a complete conversion, we'd be more than happy to talk to you about it and to make it available to the fanbase on the store. Its an all or nothing proposition though, we need total conversions because we simply don't have time to lend a hand.

Well, that was exactly what I had in mind. I am not nearly selfish enough to try and keep this for myself. When I get finished with all this, I’ll put it through to you, Denny. From what I’ve read on the other threads on this forum, there’s a lot of people who would like a TLX version of this set.

Not alone does it take a hell of a lot of time to photoshop the PDF’s, it also takes a lot of time to construct the entire cathedral (stained glass windows, anyone?). The idea is that in the end, I’ll have a completely TLX converted Cathedral.

Wow - I'm loving the stained glass idea! Are you thinking of printing out the "glass" design on inkjet transparency sheets, then cutting the bits out and wedging it between the two wall layers, or going about it another way?

Last edited by akanon on 11-01-2009, 08:22 PM, edited 1 time in total.

That said, if ambitious souls like yourself can take an older product and do a complete conversion, we'd be more than happy to talk to you about it and to make it available to the fanbase on the store. Its an all or nothing proposition though, we need total conversions because we simply don't have time to lend a hand.

Well, that was exactly what I had in mind. I am not nearly selfish enough to try and keep this for myself. When I get finished with all this, I’ll put it through to you, Denny. From what I’ve read on the other threads on this forum, there’s a lot of people who would like a TLX version of this set.

Now it’s back to work. I’ve got some walls to convert.

Sweet! I think everyone (Matt included) will be very happy to hear that! We really appreciate the effort Menace.

I’m afraid I ran into a bit of a problem. As you will all know, TLX uses posts between which you slide the walls. The problem is that this means the actual walls are 135 mm wide instead of 150 mm (6"). The problem with this is that, when I am converting the textures to the new system, I have 2 choices:

Either I use the walls at full size, cropping the nice textures and losing some cool features:

Or I scale the textures down, so I get to keep the sides of the windows and the statues and stuff:

I prefer the second option, since I think the first one looks a bit awkward. The only problem is that in scaling the width of the wall, I also have to scale its height. This means that the walls are less high (about 15 mm), but especially that the doors are smaller. If I don’t resize, the doors are 43 mm high. After the resizing they are 39 mm.

For me personally, I prefer the resized version, although I can imagine that the smaller doors could be a problem for other people. Please tell me what you think.

Oh, and sorry for the metrical measurements. I’m afraid I live in the old world, where the imperial system is something rather exotic, reserved for strange games with tiny metal miniature soldiers. As such, I wouldn’t know how to begin converting. Again, my excuses.

Last edited by menace on 11-02-2009, 04:09 PM, edited 1 time in total.

Wow - I'm loving the stained glass idea! Are you thinking of printing out the "glass" design on inkjet transparency sheets, then cutting the bits out and wedging it between the two wall layers, or going about it another way?

No, that’s about how I do it. The only problem with this is that I am not too handy when it comes to gluing all of it together. Which almost always ends up in glue stains on the windows.
And that is without the frustration of spending 5 minutes cutting the windows out, 2 minutes edging everything, 5 minutes minutely aplying glue to everything, precisely lining up the walls and gluing them shut, only to realize you forgot to put the inkjet transparency window between the two parts of the wall. D’oh!

Then again, if you look at the finished result, it looks so much better. And so, when I start doing some new windows, I always forget that I promised myself that "next time, I’ll do it without the transparencies"

No, that’s about how I do it. The only problem with this is that I am not too handy when it comes to gluing all of it together. Which almost always ends up in glue stains on the windows. And that is without the frustration of spending 5 minutes cutting the windows out, 2 minutes edging everything, 5 minutes minutely aplying glue to everything, precisely lining up the walls and gluing them shut, only to realize you forgot to put the inkjet transparency window between the two parts of the wall. D’oh!

Oooh - you don't have a craft robo, I take it? I would probably go about it a bit differently - use spray-on adhesive on the inside of the wall (AFTER cutting out the spots for the windows), cut the windows as a rectangle for easier placement and carefully place it in the gap. Fold over, burnish and you're done (well - mostly, anyway)

EDIT: As for the scaling issue, you could crop off the pillars to make up for the slightly skinnier walls, then use that texture for your pillars. I think that's what somebody else also suggested - you keep the detail, flexibility, and scale.

Could you put the decorative bits on the posts? Best of both worlds that way. May be a bit small, but could be worth a shot.

I thought of doing it that way, but it just looks a bit funny that way. The problem is that the decorative bits would be half on the post, half on the wall. There is always a bit of a gap between the walls and the posts, which means the statue for example would just look strange. That and the fact that I wanted to use the big, 4-way posts for the lower floor. This means I can put the texture from the old abuttments on them, which gives the whole building more of a cathedral-look (I’ll post pictures of this as soon as possible, you will see what I mean)

Kane wrote:

Oooh - you don't have a craft robo, I take it? I would probably go about it a bit differently - use spray-on adhesive on the inside of the wall (AFTER cutting out the spots for the windows), cut the windows as a rectangle for easier placement and carefully place it in the gap. Fold over, burnish and you're done (well - mostly, anyway)

Nope, no automatic cutting here. Everything is done by hand (although I would kill for a craft robo right now ). I am not too big a fan of spray adhesive. For some reason, it never seems to hold when I use it. And the only thing more frustrating than gluing a wall without the transparency between it is building a nice set, only to see it coming apart because the glue doesn’t hold. I’ve finally found a glue that works for me (It’s from Pritt, don’t know if they sell it in America). It has the huge advantage that it doesn’t warp the paper, but the disadvantage that it is really rather nasty, sticky stuff when you get it on your hands. But when it is dry, it is really rock solid, which is what is most important, I guess.

And here you've run into one of the MAJOR reasons we aren't currently investing time in older conversions. In many cases its not just a simple matter of slapping old textures on new templates. Some things will work but more often than not there's a lot of graphical tweaking that needs to be done to make the textures both look right and work on the templates. New strategies are often needed to transition between wall edges and posts, some graphic elements are squashed uncomfortably out of frame...yadda, yadda.

Not that its impossible, its just a big time investment to modify things properly.

I definitely understand where you're coming from, Denny. So far, I've just been converting props, standees, coins, trees, bridges, staircases, etc to machine-cuttable format. I haven't tried converting wall sections, since I don't use those for my games (we always end up removing them in order to see the the minis).

An as-is conversion of buildings and wall sections probably wouldn't be that bad, but it would be hard not to want to convert it to the latest-and-greatest TLX format, too. And THAT'S where things get nasty with all the scaling and cropping and whatnot.

That's also the main reason I'm not interested in converting full sets. I just can't justify the time for pieces I don't even use for my games in the first place.

So it's probably easier for you guys to just release new TLX buildings/wall boosters that are loosely based off the older sets. And in the meantime, I'm picking my battles, only converting things that don't need a lot of formatting and scaling work.

Oh, and great work so far, menace! I especially like how you hid the anchors with texturing. Hopefully you can find a happy medium with the walls.

Oh, and sorry for the metrical measurements. I’m afraid I live in the old world, where the imperial system is something rather exotic, reserved for strange games with tiny metal miniature soldiers. As such, I wouldn’t know how to begin converting. Again, my excuses.

Well, I know that off course. The problem starts when you get to things like 1/4" or 3/16". And it gets really difficult when trying to find the exact division for something like 4 mm. I guess it should be something around 4/25", but that just seems.... odd.

And in reaction to the problem I was having: I think I am going to solve this the easy way. I’m just going to follow my gut feeling and I am scaling everything down a bit. That’s the way I prefer it myself. If everything gets finished, I’ll send it through to you, and you can still decide whether it is good enough to offer to other people.

Well, I promised lots of pics in the title. Time to make true on that.

First of, here’s a picture of the posts. As you will see, there’s a few different ones. The difference between Himmelveil and this set is that the wall color is different on the inside and the outside, so I had to make different posts for the different corners.

And here’s a couple of pictures of the posts, positioned on the floorboard.

Something that really took me some time to get right were the arches and the pillars on the inside. I converted it so it would fit in between the posts I had made (I specially made a post with the same texture as the pillars for this.

Next are the 3" walls. I made the tabs at the side a bit longer (and off course the slots in the posts are a bit deeper), to give the wall a bit more stability. I tried with shorter, normal-sized tabs, but the walls would get slanted at the bottom.

The next shot is for the people who had suggested putting the decorative bits half on the posts. As you see, now the posts make for a more 3D-like feeling. Putting the decorative bits on there as well would have looked funny, I think.

And finally, a few shots of the work so far:

Next up is finishing the second row of pillars and getting the 6" walls done.

Great stuff! Do you plan to complete the entire file set and submit it as a conversion?

That was the idea, yes. Although I don’t know if conversion is the right word for it. From how it looks right now, I’ll have to redo everything apart from the freestanding props. An doff course, that is IF I ever get to finish the whole thing. That’s just the problem with these wild ideas I sometimes get. They always look a lot easier before I get started with them

Awesome! Looks really promising so far and you've obviously done a lot of work. You beat me to the punch on double high walls & posts too..lol. I was going to include them on Canals but I was getting too far behind.

I know Matt is busy with his Dwarven Halls set but maybe, just maybe there's some way he can help you (even if in some small way) to push this across the finish line?

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